June 17th 2009
After the new flaw found in the SHA-1 algorithm, I revoked my old 1024-bit DSA keys 3CF79EB5A445A8F1 (personal stuff) and 6C6EECCDDA5B38DD (GLM stuff).
My new key is EFFAB77E092DD1E2 and you can download it from keyservers such as hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com or hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net. This new key has been signed with my old keys, to help you decide if you could trust it.
June 15th 2009
My VPS provider was cracked last week by an attacker who removed everything on the host machines (yes, the frightening “rm -rf /”!), so my sites (including what.repoze.org) had been down until yesterday night.
The attack was performed on Sunday, but I had to wait until Friday to get a new server (fortunately I don’t host anything sensitive here). Then I spent two more days setting up the new server from scratch (not that it was too complex, but I didn’t have much time to do it). That’s why it took so much time for the sites to be back.
I believe that everything on the repoze.what website and the documentation for my Repoze plugins has been restored. But if you find anything broken (e.g., if an URL changed), please let me know.
April 16th 2009
My laptop was slow while running my chain and ball KDE 4, and also got some things broken recently (e.g., battery, screen hinges), so I decided to buy a new one last week before it leaves me stranded. And soon enough I realized that I had two options:
I liked both options alike, so I based my decision on the computer specs and costs, not on the vendor/manufacturer.
I decided to get a Dell XPS M1330, one of the two Ubuntu-powered computers that I remembered Dell sells in Spain. So I visited dell.es/ubuntu and was surprised to find just a couple of netbooks! Change of plans; now I’ll have to get it with Windows and claim a refund, I told myself.
So the first step was to get a proof that I was imposed the operating system when I bought the laptop. Sales representatives were available for a chat, so I asked them how could I get a Dell XPS M1330 without Windows. The surprising answer was that it was available with Ubuntu and pointed me to configure2.euro.dell.com/dellstore/! Plans changed one more time; back to the original plan, get it with Linux.
I obviously asked why it wasn’t listed on dell.es/ubuntu. The sales rep said that s/he didn’t know why and that s/he will forward my query to the relevant department. I bought the laptop with Ubuntu that day and that was it.
Today, out of curiosity, I went to dell.es/ubuntu and found that it hasn’t changed! The link the sales rep provided me with the other day still works but the laptop is not listed. And the same happens in dell.fr/ubuntu, dell.co.uk/ubuntu and dell.de/ubuntu, for example.
This can hardly be a mistake. Why the heck does Dell hide some of the few Linux-powered computers they sell now? Maybe due to threats from Microsoft? After all, it’s well-know for its monopolistic practices.
PS (April 18th @ 14:00 UTC): The link above to configure2.euro.dell.com/dellstore/ doesn’t work at times today, so here’s an screenshot if it doesn’t work for you:
PS (April 19th @ 18:30 UTC): This is an screenshot of the random error I warned about yesterday (which I took just in case), before reaching Digg.com’s front-page:
Now, almost 20 hours after reaching Digg’s front-page, the link no longer works (not even at times, as yesterday) and a better formatted page is displayed instead:
I don’t know if the different error pages actually mean something, but my point is that the link is now dead.
November 12th 2008
I am absolutely convinced that freedomware requires less typical development projects and more engineering projects. To overtake freedom-trampling software, we need more than a good philosophy, the best hardware support, cutting-edge technology and money — we need engineering.
We have a lot to learn from the freedom-trampling industry is this regard (possibly, the only thing that is worth “porting” to the freedomware environment). In that industry, software process standards (like CMMi or ISO 12207) are widely used and often a requirement. And we need them here too:
That a given project is community-driven with no full or part-time developer is not an excuse not to measure the software they create. It’ll certainly take time to learn what and how to measure (depending on one’s responsibilities) if the person is new to software measurement, as well as time to analyze the relevant collected measures periodically, but rest assured that by basing your estimations and decisions on such an periodical analysis, the continuous improvement of the project would be guaranteed.
Of course, not every freedomware project “must” be a software engineering project. Tiny projects aimed at a very limited audience and maintained by a couple of developers may not require such a care, specially if it’s not expected to grow too much.
Unfortunately, it’s worth noting that there’s a drawback of using standards like the ones mentioned above: They (usually) assume a software development process like that of non-free software, so you’ll frequently encounter (much) text specific to such processes; and as a result, many processes specific to freedomware development are not covered. I think we need an standard that addresses our software development processes.
As in the previous article on software measurement, I recommend the book “Software Measurement” by Christof Ebert and Reiner Dumke (ISBN: 978-3-540-71648-8). As I said previously, it’s a must-read, although it’s perhaps specially aimed at decision-makers and not too much at developers themselves.
Another good book on this topic, which is more practical (as its title implies), is “Software measurement and estimation: A practical approach” by Linda Laird and M. Carol Brennan (ISBN: 978-0-471-67622-5). This one is definitely aimed at developers themselves.
If I reached my goal of making you interested in software measurement in freedomware, then you may also want to keep an eye on the upcoming ÉcoleCua project.
Finally, I invite you to check out Ohloh.net, a gratis and basic metrics service for freedomware projects.
November 10th 2008
Tired of the indeliberate usage of the term “software engineering”, where “software developer” and “software engineer” seem to be exchangeable, I’m writing this article to explain what I think Software Engineering really is.
But first, let’s remember some basic terminology:
Both programmers and software developers qualify the software progress. They can’t often meet deadlines nor track process because they don’t know for sure where they are nor where they should be. Qualification is subjective and absolutely imprecise, so you can only have subjective and imprecise answers to precise questions like “when it’s going to be ready?” (to which the most common answers are “soon” or “when it’s ready” in the freedomare world).
When you travel by car, what can you do to find how far you’re from the destination and how much time is left? You have to measure. If you find a sign that states that you’re 20Kms away from your destination and you measure the current car’s speed (well, your car does so for you) and it turns out to be 60Km/hour, then you’ll realize that if you keep the speed you’ll arrive in 20 minutes. If you don’t measure, you can’t tell if you’re on time and you can’t even avoid getting late next time (to improve, you need to know the previous measures!).
If you quantify, you will find the real status of a given process and whether you’ll reach your goals within the desired parameters (time, money, etc.). If you quantified and analyzed such measures, you will be able to execute the right corrections in order to improve the process and thus reach the goals within the desired parameters, or at least reduce the difference between the desired parameters and the final results (this is, reduce risk). And that’s not specific to software.
So, the difference between a disciplined software developer and a software engineer, is that the former qualifies and the later quantifies. In a software engineering project, when a process is going wrong, it’s found (the sooner or later) thanks to software metrics (or “software measurements”) and the appropriate steps are taken to reduce risk. In a software development project, the process is not measured and software product is delivered out of at least one parameter (over-budget, with less features, after the deadline, etc.).
I don’t think you need a diploma that says you’re a software engineer (or hold a position ending by “Software Engineer” in a organization) to call yourself “software engineer”, unless required by local law. But you need to be a disciplined software developer who measures the software process and make decisions based on an objective analysis of the relevant measures.
There are good resources out there to learn more about software measurement. The one I strongly recommend is “Software Measurement” by Christof Ebert and Reiner Dumke (ISBN: 978-3-540-71648-8). This book is a great introduction to software measurement and covers the four kinds of software metrics (project, process, product and people metrics). I think it’s a must-read for anyone involved in software processes and wants to improve continuously (which can only be achieved by measuring!).
But there are also good resources on the Web, like the ones listed below. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find something like the book above, but online.
October 30th 2008
My first impression with Intrepid has not been good at all:
PS (Nov 4th): A few days later, I have to admit that I love this Kubuntu release! It fixed several broken things from Hardy and includes nice features!
October 27th 2008
Those still using TurboGears 1 will find a big improvement in the authentication and authorizarion area when they upgrade to version 2: TurboGears 2 ships with an easy-to-use, pluggable, extendable and well-documented authentication and authorization system, powered by repoze.who and tgext.authorization (whose documentation will be available along with TurboGears’ very soon).
Some of the features include:
Right now there’s only the SQL plugin, so in the mean time you may still only store your groups and permissions in a SQLAlchemy or Elixir managed database, but very soon we’ll have the Ini plugin (to store groups and permissions in *.ini files) and even more.
In the future you’ll also be able to get OpenId authentication with a couple of lines of code (there’s a work in progress) and possibly OAuth authorization too.
And you may give it a try now! You can either try the latest code from the trunk or wait for the first TG2 beta which will hopefully be released in a couple of days.
October 27th 2008
Some weeks ago I was invited to make repoze.who.plugins.ldap an official repoze.who plugin, which means that:
I’ve not started the migration, but I hope to start in a few days.
October 10th 2008
I remember that when I announced that GLM’s servers were being switched to Ubuntu, I got comments on that post and some emails asking me to reconsider this for reasons I didn’t agree with.
Some months later, I read that Wikimedia is switching their ~400 servers to Ubuntu. Beyond this being a surprise to me, I applaud this wise move, with which they already feel happy.
Having Ubuntu on the server has been a pleasant experience, so I’d encourage those sysadmins who (want to) have an offline life to switch to Ubuntu!
September 13th 2008
I got tired of the slowness of DreamHost servers and its consequences, such as sites being down or extremely slow from time to time. So I decided to migrate progressively over the next weeks to WebFaction because:
So here I offer a comparison on the server load in my DreamHost shared host vs my WebFaction shared host.
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